1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, and more particularly to object recognition, focusing on the motion of an object.
2. Description of the Related Art
Panning shot is a shooting technique for expressing the sense of speed caused by a moving object. An object of the above-described shooting technique is to capture an image of the moving object in such a way that the background flows while the object is at rest in the captured image. To take a panning shot, a photographer pans a camera in synchronization with the motion of the object. In general panning shot, the shutter speed is adjusted to a slower speed than usual according to the moving speed of the object (main object). However, because of the slow shutter speed, even the main object is often blurred by the effect of camera-shake and the difference between the moving speed of the main object and the panning speed. In view of the above-described problem, there is a demand for facilitating panning shot by using an image processing technique.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-339803 discusses an imaging apparatus which arbitrarily sets a reference area for main object capturing, identifies a main object based on a positional relationship between each piece of image data and the reference area, and combines a plurality of images through position adjustment with reference to the identified main object. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-273183 discusses an imaging apparatus which detects moving objects based on movement vectors between images and the camera motion, identifies a main object from among the detected moving objects based on information for main object identification, and applies the effect of panning shot to areas other than the main object.
However, in the above-described conventional technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-339803, since it is necessary to set a reference area for main object capturing, a main object may not be captured if it exists in areas other than the reference area. Further, to capture an image in a desired composition, pre-processing such as reference area presetting is required.